Archive of Our Own ^beta

“You never fail to surprise me, my darling,” Loquatius tells her, soft and admiring.

By every right, the epithet should make Laerryn want to snarl at him – she has never appreciated being told who and what she is, and besides: people always get it wrong anyway. Except that, from him, the appellation sounds genuine rather than condescending, and hearing it simply fills her with a glow of warmth that she immediately shoves down rather than investigate any further.

“Oh? And why is that?” She has to know. “Because I know what I want, and I do what I must in order to reach it?”

“Mmmm, no,” he murmurs, but the words come slightly quieter now as he moves across the room. “Not at all.” He’s obviously distracted, circling her latest creation with the slitted eyes and tip-toed gait that mean he’s intrigued by it. She has often heard others compare him to a cat, a sort of small terrestrial mammal that many even here in the City of Crowns keep as pets, but she has no idea why. Loquatius could not be any obviously less like a domesticated animal if he tried.

“Well?”

He looks back at her then, blank fey eyes shining. “Because the shape of your successes is so rarely anything that I ever expect, dear heart,” he says simply.

And once again, perhaps Laerryn should find such a flowery answer condescending – she is an engineer of the very highest order, after all, and the Fey man knows little to nothing of her field or what is technically possible within it. It does not escape her, though, how he is not surprised that she succeeded.

It also does not escape her that he has crouched down and is now running one pale, slender finger down the side of her latest creation with rapt attention, as if assessing what it is capable of. The sight leaves a rather different kind of warmth surging through her, and Laerryn has to shake her head to try and clear it.

“Can you tell what it is, then?” she asks him.

“I can certainly speculate, at the very least,” he returns, bright with interest. “Particularly given the tenor of our conversation the other evening – though you must admit that was a terribly boring party, wasn’t it? Even I couldn’t find anything redeeming about the whole awful affair save the way you scowled at me when I felt you up beneath our table, and poor darling Patia’s face when she caught us. And I do believe that you promised me hell at a later time in repayment for my cheek, yes?”

Close enough, Laerryn supposes. Although honestly – and even if she can’t tell him this because then he would become insufferable – his dexterity that night had indeed been one of the few things that made the entire evening bearable.

“Tell me what you think, then,” she decides. And as she waits for him to speak, it just feels natural, right, to step up behind him; to slide her arm around his waist and cradle a sharp hipbone in her palm.  

Her decision to do so has nothing to do with the small, secret smile that she knows he darts toward her when he thinks she isn’t looking. Nothing at all.

“In my highly inexpert opinion, I think.” His voice sinks into something comparable to the purring of her engines as he leans down the scant inch or two separating their heights so that he can murmur the rest in her ear. “That this fine machine you have constructed, in a mere three days since that interminable bore of a city affair, is perhaps meant for some lucky soul to sit upon. Then, I imagine, you will do some ingenious thing with some clever hidden button, and the lucky soul in question will be left to suffer a most delicious little death at your merciless hands.”

“Sordid, Seelie,” she sniffs, squeezing his hip. She’d prefer to distract him; she’s not willing to let him know quite yet how correct he is.

But before she can say another word, he turns just enough so that he can catch up her other hand in one of his own. Mildly curious, she allows it, only raising one brow at him as he lifts his prize to his lips.

“Dear heart,” he murmurs, and how are his lips so soft against her fingers? “Someday, you must let me persuade you to use the other half of my chosen name.”

She sighs. Not this again. “I’ve told you before, I can’t: it’s too ridiculous. Couldn’t you have chosen anything just a little less on the nose?”

She can feel the shape of his smile against her fingers, and no eyes as blank as his are should be able to hold so soft an expression as his do. Only her pride prevents her from looking away from that disarming sight.  

“So you’ve said,” he murmurs. “I rather like it, though. So I suppose we must either seek some compromise or continue dancing this waltz until one of us surrenders.”

“I’ll come up with a compromise.” She has no doubt that in time she could wear him down, make him surrender. But even if she doesn’t fully understand the nature of Fey names, she is well aware that his taking a new one upon making his home here in Avalir was a choice that holds some power, and she wouldn’t ask this of him.

“Oh? Then I will look forward to hearing it.” He releases her hand with just as much care as he had initially taken it. “But for now, I want to know how correct I am about this.”

His fingers have always seemed somewhat obscene to her. Just – look, it’s the length of them, the dexterity. The man can work miracles without casting a spark of magic. And now, while gesturing toward her latest creation? Particularly obscene.

“You were mostly right.” Admitting as much is a snap decision, but she figures that he’s earned it. “Whoever I invited here could, yes, certainly sit on it. Or, they could bring me that box over there, and-“

Even as she speaks, he’s already stepping in the direction she indicates, and Laerryn would swear that she feels sparks pass between their fingertips when he hands her the box she’d pointed out.

Well. All right then.

“-aaaaand I could be persuaded to pull out something like this,” she finishes, belatedly, as she opens the lid for him to peek inside.

When he does, his blank eyes widen and his mouth parts in surprise. Planes about them, but Laerryn does adore surprising him.

“So that’s what you wanted it for,” he says softly, admiring the cast of his own cock that lies within. Without an ounce of embarrassment or hesitation in him, he’s already reaching inside the box and tracing along the length of it. And she knows him well enough by now that the minute wrinkle at his brow tells her his mind is racing, likely putting together the timeline: of when she’d asked him to pose and hold still for her, fully erect, and then when he’d teased her at the party. An entire tenday separates these two events.

“You’ve been planning.” He’s grinning when he raises his eyes from the box back to her face. “Utterly marvelous. From today on, I will never be able to hear you telling me to go fuck myself without picturing this pretty thing.”

She can’t help but grin right back at him. “That was the original idea. But then you gave me a better one.”

“Oh?”

“Mhm.” There’s more in the box that he hasn’t even commented on yet, enamored with himself as he is. How like him. Still. Beckoning for him to follow her over to a table, Laerryn lays out the box’s contents: the cast, yes, but also the device to which she can affix it before both will be fastened to the larger machine on the floor that had drawn his attention earlier.

“Oho.” The glee has returned to his voice as he watches her work: mounting the cast atop the rod at the end of the smaller device, then twisting it so that the two lock into place together. “This isn’t for you, then.”

“Not this time, at least.” She doesn’t turn around as she says it; doesn’t need him seeing the flush that she can feel rising to her face no matter how hard she tries to will it down. “I don’t know, it just seemed fitting for you.”

And when she hands him the whole arrangement – the cast of his own cock now standing proud atop a sturdy wooden base – he simply takes it with an avid gaze and a peal of delighted laughter.

That’s the giveaway, she thinks every time she hears it. His laugh, even more than his fingers or his gait or his eyes, is what alerts mortals that he is not one of them. Something strange slinks along its borders: bells, perhaps, chiming soft and low.

Ugh. Laerryn is no poet. But this maddening man defies enough conventional description that he makes her want to try all the same.  

“I know that I have said as much before,” he murmurs now, and she can’t help but note that he makes no move to offer her back the handful he still holds. “But. I would suffer Hell itself to know what you intend to do to me tonight.”

And she could tell him, couldn’t she. Or, she could simply show him.

So, stepping back to supervise, she directs him through the motions of sliding the wooden base into place, then tightening the screws that hold it steady. When he does so, the cast of his cock is left pointing right to the ceiling, and oh, it is gratifying as hell to watch his smile slowly morph into something a little hungrier.

For her. For her time and labor and talent and what she has made using them.

“Dear heart,” he whispers as he stands again, and there is a rasp to the words that she thinks is real excitement and arousal, not his shifting into another voice. “Please. Do not tease me. Tell me what you have in mind for this very promising evening.”

You, she thinks but does not say. And it is driving me mad that I can’t figure out why.

“Since you’re so fond of showing off,” she tells him instead, ignoring his smirk as she does – this has been a point of contention between them for some time now. “This is your chance to do it for me.”

“Don’t I always?” he murmurs, with the sad little moue that he knows exasperates her.

“Only every single time,” she sighs, giving in enough to rub at the bridge of her nose. “Fine. Bad choice of words. Say then, that you’re going to put on a show for me while I control the stage you’re seated on.”

Oh, that hooks him. His kiss is heated, and for a moment their fingers tangle together as they both try to undo the unnecessarily tiny buttons of his shirt at the same time. But eventually Laerryn moves to his cravat instead, pulling it away to expose his pale throat, and he laughs, breathless, as she traces the hollow beneath it while he pulls his shirt from his shoulders. Her hands are dark against the unearthly ivory of his neck and chest.

“You do the rest,” she tells him briskly, stepping back before he can distract her too much.

“And you?” he asks, hopeful, even as he undoes his placket. He can't have possibly missed how her dress remains fully in place. 

“If you make this as good as I trust you can, then perhaps it will come off later,” she promises, as offhandedly as she can manage with a Fey creature stripping off the last of his garments at her say-so.

“A delightful challenge,” he breathes. His fingers shimmer, and for a moment she thinks he has cast his normal enchantment to prepare himself, before that arcane spark then fizzles out and he cocks his head to one side, as if considering something else.

“But no, the Architect Arcane has requested a show,” he says slowly, grin spreading across his face like a sunrise painting the sky. He snaps his fingers this time, and when the gesture is completed, his slender fingers are left gripping a small vial. She barely has time to comprehend this change before he gestures behind her – at his behest, one of her chairs slides across the floor until its velvet-padded seat nudges against the backs of her legs – and then folds to his knees at her feet.

And Laerryn sits. Or, more like collapses into taking a seat, really. Honestly, what else is she supposed to do, when faced with the sight of Loquatius Seelie on his knees, ready to perform?

For all that they’ve fucked across nearly every stable surface in her quarters at this point – and at his office at the Tome, and in the Tome’s archives, and various locations across the city to boot – Laerryn has to admit that she can’t think of a time when they’d done this before. After all, why bother with manual preparation when a spell can do the same job, faster and neater and better to boot? But she’s already beginning to rethink that now, as she watches him – her lover? have they reached that point by now? – reach behind himself with obviously practiced movements of those clever, obscene fingers.

Planes about them, how often has he done this? When? Where? Between his soft, panting gasps and his eyes screwed shut in pleasure, he could be a pornographic crystal come to life before her eyes. And while she hasn’t even touched him yet, his cock is already growing firm against his thigh.

Then his head lolls forward, so that his brow is resting against her knee. She can feel his breath, tickling against her skin even through her dress.

There has to be something she can say. Something that isn’t his ridiculous chosen first name, or the surname that apparently makes her sound so cold to him, but something that is obviously still his.

Oh.

Oh.

“Quay,” she decides softly, giving in to the impulse to reach forward and run her fingers through his impossibly soft hair, then letting her hand slip down to cradle his face.

The Fey man jerks as if he’s been electrified, or perhaps as if she’d fisted her hand in his hair and yanked. Whether it’s from the compromise she’s offering or from her touch, Laerryn couldn’t say, but he regards her with wide-blown eyes now, and his mouth has fallen open in a soundless gasp. By the arch of his back and the flutter of his lashes, she thinks that his eyes are rolling back in his head; his breath is already beginning to hitch as well.

Which won’t do at all. He hasn’t even gotten to try out his own cock yet.

“Stop, Quay.” And before she even thinks about it, Laerryn is already sliding off the chair that he’d summoned for her, wrapping her hand around the base of his cock and squeezing. “Wait. Not yet.”

He is blood-hot in her hand, and he gasps, shivers, in her grip. But his other hand, the one that isn’t inside himself, flies up to clasp her wrist, and he nods, wordless, as if to promise her that he won’t. Not yet.   

Incredible. Quay Seelie is a ridiculous man, and for some equally ridiculous reason, Laerryn likes him so very much. She can’t think of anything to do about this fact except to lean forward and kiss him softly.

He meets her with all the fervor of a starving man, and his hips punch forward. He breaks the kiss to gasp when her grip doesn’t loosen to let him move.

His little mewl makes her smile, as does his soft remonstrance of “Laerryn… please…”

“Please what, Seelie.” Ah, but wait – she has other options now. She amends: “Please what, Quay. Use that silver tongue of yours to tell me what you need.”

And she is absolutely expecting him to dredge up a façade for his reply – one of the many masks he wears, almost anywhere and upon any occasion, or even none at all. But instead –

“You,” he breathes simply. His hips jerk forward again, and his cock twitches in her grasp. “The one who has dared Name me again. Please.”

Um. She has no idea what that meant. Means? So she focuses on what she knows instead. His arm has stilled: he must have finished preparing himself.

“Uhhh..” Eloquent, woman. Wonderful. “All right. Good.”

She releases her grip on him and stands again, just enough so that she can retake her seat. “Then if you’re ready, put the attachment–” No, that’s not right. “Put your cock where you need it.”

He nods avidly, biting his lower lip in concentration, and his blank gaze remains fixed on her as he lifts and resettles himself: tentatively at first, then with a sudden rolling surge of bliss.

“Oh, I feel good,” he murmurs as he sinks down, just far enough to take the tip, and this awful double entendre is punctuated with the ghost of a grin directed at her. She snorts – that’s the smirk of a man entirely too pleased with his own cleverness right there – and holds up her hand so that he can watch her make the gesture that starts the machine.

“Ohhhhh,” Quay Seelie breathes as it buzzes to life beneath him, driving the cast of his cock into him. “Fuck, darling, that’s –“

So much? Divine? Eh, she can wait until he gets his breath back to hear the reviews, even if “that” is honestly just the slowest setting she built this fucker to offer.

And honestly, what Laerryn is already enjoying most about this particular creation is the way that it lets her watch his face as he gets fucked, nice and slow for the moment at least. Because this, right here? Twisting in pleasure? This is Quay Seelie’s actual face, not one of the myriad he assumes when speaking to their city or even when, in his own words, he tries to guess who she’d prefer to be fucking instead of him.

(Yet another reason why he is ridiculous. If there were someone else, she would’ve gone after them instead. But she asked him. She wants him.)

With a shiver, almost as if he’d heard her thinking, he leans forward now to brace his arms atop her knees. Letting her hold him steady, even as her creation pistons into him.

“Quay,” she whispers. A shiver ripples through him at the name, and ah, she is only mortal: how is she meant to resist doing that again? “Quay. Move and you’ll change the angle. The depth. Get it where you really want it.”

He obeys as best he can, shifting in place until his arms suddenly lock with the intensity of whatever it is he’s feeling. His back arches and his head falls back, and she watches his alabaster throat bob as he gulps.

“Right there,” he whispers. As if she is the one who needs to hold her position. “Please. Faster.”

“Mmmmmm.” She pretends to think about this, but: “No, not yet. I warned you, I owe you a little hell after your rash decisions the other night.”

His eyes flutter open and he offers her a strained grin. “I – I suppose – you did – but – have to admit – it was fun –“

Ok, you know what? As much as she’d wanted to watch him writhe, she supposes that will still be possible if her machine is operating at a faster speed after all. And indeed, when her next arcane gesture kicks it up a gear, Quay sucks in a breath through his teeth, hissing with pleasure and shifting again until the cast of his own cock is hitting just the right angle inside himself.

Now. This machine is far from the first that Laerryn has created, but even so, she’d had a split second of doubt before she invited Quay up to see it. As methods of fucking go, this one is – unmistakably mechanical. The flow of arcane energy being directed into pistons and shafts that move inorganic components, not her lover’s body directly; the low, never-ending hum; the coolness of metal and the impersonality of wood. But Laerryn has never seen these kinds of things as detriments: machines accomplish what mortals cannot, and why should wrecking Quay Seelie be any different?

And delightfully, the man in question doesn’t seem to disagree. Indeed, he seems to have been transported somewhere far beyond words now, curled over her knees with his long slim fingers tight on her thighs as if she alone can anchor him here while her creation pistons into him with all the relentless force no mortal creature could maintain.

Taking off her dress had seemed too impulsive at the time, but Laerryn is somewhat regretting that decision now – she can feel how wet she is. In her defense, though, how could she be anything else, with this man at her feet moaning like he’s being pushed to the very brink? His breath is fire-hot against her, and she squirms imagining what that would feel like just a few inches higher, and whether he would have the coordination to help her peak too when he’s practically shaking to pieces himself…

Another time. Next time. But for now…

She gestures again, slowing her creation’s speed, and Quay keens, his back arching as if trying to push his ass backward into a partner who could be enticed to start fucking him harder again.

She could drown in the desperate depths of those blank eyes when they open and focus on her again, apparently with some difficulty.

“Please.”

His fingers tremble and tighten against her thighs, and his hair is damp with sweat when she runs her fingers through it this time. She can see the sheen of it on his skin as well. “Please what, darling.”

He smiles at that, amused and shaking and the most beautiful goddamn man she has ever seen when he isn’t too busy playing a part to just be himself.

“Please – darling,” he manages. “No more – teasing, I – I concede.”

She hums, considering, and shifts in her seat. This sets off a delightful ripple effect, jostling his arms and leaving him gasping as the unexpected movement shifts the angle of the cock inside him.

“Want-“ he begins, panting.

“To come, I’m sure,” she guesses, cutting in. She taps her fingers in random patterns against his arm, admiring his shiver. “I suppose, since you have proven-“

Somehow this smile, still shaky, is even more radiant than the last. “That – that too. But I – wanted – to make – you come.”

Oh.

Ridiculous, infuriating, exquisite man.

“But I didn’t take off my dress,” she reminds him.

“I can – can see that.” He’s laughing at her now, so with a roll of her eyes and a single gesture, she grants him once more that speed he'd wanted, and she smirks as he wheezes, breath momentarily driven from his lungs beneath the renewed mechanical onslaught.

“M-magic, dear heart?” he manages to add.

True enough, she supposes. In all honesty the sight of him, the sound of him, had completely driven that possibility from her mind for a moment.

Luckily, once decided, this is the work of mere seconds to accomplish: to banish her garments, and then to reposition herself where his searing mouth and clever tongue can reach her. He dives into her with more than his usual eagerness, and she can’t quite stifle a gasp to match his earlier.

She fights to keep her eyes open, though. So rarely does she get to see Quay Seelie bared, exposed, that she has to take every opportunity she can get, no matter how overwhelming other stimuli may become.

And still, her senses are filled: the low droning purr of her creation, Quay’s bitten-off noises of pleasure and the inelegant sounds of his mouth upon her wetness, the smell of ozone and of sex, the tingling of her skin and the heat pooling low and deep within her body, the cool air against her prickling skin and the softness of his hair still between her fingers…

She bucks against his face before she can quite stop herself. He moans in encouragement and tries to nuzzle in further, but she can already tell that she’ll need more than this light touch to finish. But she rather doubts that he will.

So she releases his hair and hooks a finger beneath his chin instead, encouraging him to look up at her.

“Come for me, Quay,” she tells him quietly when he does. “I want to see you.”

Given their utter blankness, she can never tell for certain whether his odd Fey eyes are dazed or unfocused or alert – Laerryn can only guess, based on the rest of his expression, and fuck knows that he has quite a few of those to hide behind. But here – now – whatever his eyes are doing, he seems to be gazing right through her, out into planes she cannot reach or see, before her machine finally shakes him apart and he comes with a cry.

He is always strikingly beautiful, but never more so than in unguarded, unfiltered moments like this. Moments when he couldn’t don a mask if he tried – and better still, when he doesn’t even bother trying. Not for her.

Hhhh. The things that Laerryn feels about and for this man…

She takes mercy on him then, halting her machine’s movement still pistoning into him before his oversensitivity can tip over into pain. He doesn’t even seem to notice, wracked as he is by the aftershocks, and his head tips forward into her lap again. She can feel the heat of his breath against her, just inches from where she could really really really use a hand again right now, but she can wait, she supposes. Let him recover his wind before she claims a turn with the cock that’s the real deal, not the cast she made for him to enjoy.

And when she draws him up to kiss him again, he murmurs happily against her lips, something about needing to rile her up more often if it nets him such exquisite results.

She shakes her head, amused and annoyed in equal parts. “Before you know it, we’ll sound like an old married couple.”

“Will we?” He hums, sounding thoughtful. “That is – not a possibility I had considered before. Had you?”

No. Maybe. Yes, sometimes? But only in very specific and understandable circumstances, because she’s not a girl of ninety anymore and she doesn’t have a journal where she doodles what she imagines a married surname might look like.

But Quay Seelie doesn’t need to know that right now. Right now, all he needs to know is that he occupies enough of Laerryn’s mind that she cannot even go about her normal work without thinking of how she could repurpose parts of it for something he would enjoy too.